billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 19, 2015

You know, there are some weeks where I wonder why I even bother doing my album reviews, instead just focusing on Billboard BREAKDOWN, because in the case of certain records, nearly every song from it is going to land on the charts at some point, so why should I bother? And this week, not only do we have one of those cases, we also have a song from a previous case of it returning high to the charts. And yet, none of those have ended up being the biggest story of this week, mostly we have a new #1, the first of his career and one riding the wave of a tearful VMAs performance to take the very top. And folks, time to dust off those old pitchforks: Justin Bieber is back, and he's bigger than ever.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 30, 2015 (VIDEO)

And that actually went a lot smoother than I expected. Nice feeling, that is.

Next up... hmm, I've got a country record I really want to cover, but will I have a chance to get to it before a special episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN or something special for this weekend? We'll see, but stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 30, 2015

So we’re now at the halfway point of the Billboard Hot 100 year, so let’s take stock of the situation – and while I wouldn’t quite say it was a disappointment, it certainly is interesting to see how certain trends have oscillated. R&B and neo-soul are fighting pop for dominance – with pop arguably gaining the upper hand – country has mostly stayed quiet to flush the last dregs of bro-country out of its system, all sorts of off-beat, weird tracks have fought their way up from both electronica and the indie scene, and hip-hop continues to marginalize talent and wordplay in favour of the lowest common denominator. Sure, I might lament the failure of a few promising pop and country tracks, but the rise of nu-crunk and the prevalence of Vine have driven more than its fair share of forgettable garbage to the top – and the alarming thing is that it keeps happening.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 21, 2015 (VIDEO)

Well, this was another struggle to get online. Damn, this took too long...

Okay, next up, schedule as usual, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 21, 2015

Sometimes on Billboard BREAKDOWN, we can get some pretty rough weeks... but sometimes you the weeks where it all just clicks in some of the best ways possible. The good songs win, the bad songs lose, the new songs kick ass, and even the returning tracks aren't bad. I don't think it's quite possible to ever have a perfect week - simply based on the law of averages I reckon it's impossible to a Hot 100 that's all great music - but you can have great weeks. And folks, we came pretty close here - yeah, we got some rough songs, but we also got a bonafide classic, and I couldn't be happier about that.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 14, 2015 (VIDEO)

Well, this took longer to get up than I was hoping. Worth it, though.

Next up, got a whole list of artists. Purity Ring, Cannibal Ox, and more - stay tuned

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 14, 2015

So here's an interesting hypothetical for all of you - presume you're an artist who has scheduled to release his album - and then out of nowhere, one of your competition drops a critically acclaimed mixtape/album that gains him a ton of buzz. You're angry, you're annoyed - without warning, he seems to have stolen your thunder - do you delay your record? It's an interesting question - but it appears by staying the course, Big Sean got an interesting results on the charts. Simply put, Drake was riding a wave of hype that managed to lodge ten songs off of his new album on the charts, and when they inevitably faded, something had to replace them. Now sure, Big Sean could have impacted the chart with his album anyway, but I'd argue he wouldn't have lodged as many tracks - and unlike Drake, the songs Big Sean got charting were his best ones. I might not like the guy, but I have to give him props here, even if some of it was pure luck.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 7, 2015 (VIDEO)

Another episode out of the way. Whew.

Okay, next up... see, I've got a few I'd like to talk about. Misterwives, The Mavericks, The Pop Group... lots of options. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 7, 2015

At this point, I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't have even covered that surprise Drake album - because if the radio is going to decide to play the entire record, I'm going to end up covering all the songs anyway. I would say that, except that none of the songs I actually thought were great from If You're Reading This It's Too Late have made the Hot 100. I will note this: for as much as many critics hypothesized that there didn't seem to be an easy radio hit off of Drake's new record, not since Taylor Swift have we seen this many album tracks crack the Hot 100. And speaking of her, she's got another single - and even though I reviewed her album, it's not one I've heard yet... interesting.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 10, 2015 (VIDEO)

Man, that took way too long to release. Glad to finally get it out there.

Okay, next up is... oh god, Rae Sremmurd? Seriously, there's nothing else?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - january 10, 2015

So one would think upon my return from vacation to take a look at the Hot 100 that things kind of went a little crazy this week. Not in the new arrivals to the charts - if anything, we have the least number of new entries to date, which hopefully means this episode will be a little shorter this week. No, the change was in what gained steam this week, because there were a ton of gains this week that seemingly came out of nowhere. Not only that, they were for songs that came out in 2014, some that had even fallen off the charts altogether! What gives?

video review: 1989' by taylor swift

Can't imagine how this video will be controversial at all...

Well, anyway, next up will probably be Run The Jewels on Wednesday, and maybe another review along with it. Busy tomorrow night. Either way, stay tuned!

album review: '1989' by taylor swift

It's hard as a critic for me to talk about Taylor Swift.

See, when she burst onto the scene in the late 2000s, I had conflicting feelings on her. On the one hand, I found her songwriting sloppy and lacking depth, I found her instrumental compositions to be a little uninspired, and she didn't exactly stun me with incredible vocals. On the other hand, she had a knack for solid hooks, a fair amount of charisma and personality, and her songs had a real sense of honest populism to them. They felt clumsy, but it was authentic and came from a place of reality for Taylor Swift and her legions of fans could identify with that. And with her album Speak Now, it seemed like she was going even further in that country-flavoured direction and her songwriting was slowly getting more refined.

And then something happened. Some have blamed her, some have blamed her label head Scott Borchetta for bringing on Max Martin and Shellback, but Red was a 180 from the depth and more mature songwriting of Speak Now, going for a flagrantly pop focus that mirrored the sell-out of her spiritual predecessor Avril Lavigne in starting in down-to-earth, detail-heavy, authentic songwriting and who had no idea how to age artistically. And I'll be blunt - I really did not like Red when I reviewed it on my blog two years ago and drew that exact same parallel. Looking back on it now... well, the album was transitional. It was partially filled with the country-flavoured songwriting I appreciated, but it was also very clear she was going to go in the pop diva direction - which on every level did not strike me as a good choice. Her greatest strengths in her songwriting was detail and relatability, and she was going to throw it out for songs that emphasized and reveled in a shallow worldview that flew in the face of any artistic growth or maturity? You don't get songs like 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together', 'The Lucky Ones', '22', and especially 'I Knew You Were Trouble' if you're maturing artistically.

But whatever, she's going for pop now - I can roll with that. But I did not know what to expect coming from her new album 1989, reportedly inspired by the pop music of that year. And having gone back to look at that year, 1989 was a terrible year for the pop charts, where the biggest artists were Chicago, Paula Abdul, Bette Midler, Milli Vanilli, Richard Marx, and plenty of others peddling easy-listening schlock. Now of course Taylor Swift is obviously saying she's drawing more of her influences from Madonna, who did have a good year in '89, but every female pop star pulls from Madonna and Taylor Swift always struck me as a lot closer to Debbie Gibson, who charted higher than Madonna that year anyway. That said, Taylor Swift said she was also drawing influence from Annie Lennox, who most people probably remember most from her work with the Eurythmics - which, okay, that's interesting. And when you start digging into the songwriters working with her, you get Max Martin and Shellback, but I also saw writing credits from Jack Antonoff, the guitarist of fun. and frontman of Bleachers, and Imogen Heap, two artists who dropped some of my favourite albums of this year. So I had to check out 1989 and I honestly hoped for the best - sure, I didn't like 'Shake It Off', but there had to be more here than that, right?

the top ten worst hit songs of 2013 - video

First list finished! Next up, the top ten best hit songs of 2013 - stay tuned!

the top ten worst hit songs of 2013

It's that time again.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's that time of year where I take a look at the biggest hit songs of the year and pick out the top ten best and worst to the complete indifference of artists, producers, and fans alike! Sounds like fun, eh? Okay, let's get started, and I think the prime place to begin is at the absolute bottom: the top ten worst hit songs of the year.

First, some ground rules. For one, a song will only ever make the list if it debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End chart this year. Of course there are holdovers I dislike from last year, but they had their chance to pop up on my 2012 list (which is available here). And I'm only choosing songs from this list - of course there were worse tracks that I covered in my album reviews, but I want to make the point that not only are these songs terrible, they're also impossible to escape throughout the year.

And here's another thing to keep in mind: for a song to reach my list, it has to actively annoy or irritate me, and simply being boring is often not enough to propel a song into my line of fire. The year-end charts are less aggressively bad than they are boring, and this year had that problem more than previous years, mostly because the indie boom lost momentum and mainstream radio had no idea what to replace it with. That means large tracts of this year were dominated by easy listening slow jams, interchangeable EDM, increasingly listless hip-hop, and a disco revival that came out of nowhere. 

But that's not saying there weren't songs that pissed me off, so let's begin by tackling some Dishonourable Mentions, shall we?

album review: 'pioneer' by the band perry

It's hard talking about acts that can be considered 'good'.

And I know that's the sort of comment you only ever hear from critics, but as someone who has reached their fiftieth review on this blog, it's kind of true. But the reason you typically only hear the criticism from critics is because we experience so much material that our frame of reference becomes a bit too expansive. It's a bit of a strange conundrum, but it's always a little odd when I realize that I'll probably listen to around a hundred different albums this year and ten times that many songs. I'm going to hear things I'll both like and despise - but for the average consumer who gets maybe two to five albums a year and listens to the radio, they aren't going to have that frame of reference. They'll hear something that's good and like it without question - and while I'd really prefer that more people seek out the great, there's nothing wrong with liking things, particularly when those things arguably succeed in what they set out to do. 

However, speaking as a critic, the hardest reviews to write and articulate are of the albums that are just 'good'. Everyone can go on for hours at length about something that's bad - there's a whole swarm of internet critics that have made their fame on that premise alone. And those reviews are easy to write too (the difficult part is often experiencing the awful). It takes a lot more courage of convictions to say something is great, because there will always be people who'll challenge it. I know there are people who probably find my love of Avril Lavigne and Panic At The Disco and the Backstreet Boys and Ke$ha completely baffling, but if you're a good critic, you should be able to stand by what you like.

Now most professional critics typically say that the hardest things to criticize are those in the middle: the mediocre, the 3/5, the passing grade. And that particularly becomes a problem with reviewing albums, because you tend to find filler tracks that aren't precisely bad, but they aren't going to stand out. To say something meaningful about them often requires deeper analysis, but sometimes there just isn't anything there, nothing to say.

But when I dug a little deeper, I realized that those songs can be criticized or discussed, simply by pinpointing the purpose of what those songs are intending to do and seeing whether or not they complete those goals. More often than not, mediocrity comes with more failures than weak successes. In fact, I'd argue the hardest songs to discuss and criticize aren't the ones that are mediocre or middle-of-the-road, but the ones that are good, but not great. Just above album filler in that they accomplish what they set out to do, but otherwise provide nothing interesting to talk about. Nothing that blows your mind, the average consumer will be fine with it, but it's not going to set their worlds on fire either. And speaking as someone who has spent far too much time poring over Billboard charts, there is a lot of this material.

In fact, the more I've delved into the country charts, the more I've found a significant heap of this material performing well on the charts. Sure, there's plenty of mediocre and more bad and awful than I'd like, but there's a lot of good stuff there too, music that won't ever change someone's life or be emotionally evocative or a big smash hit, but passes the time in a way that won't frustrate or disappoint anyone. 

And I remember reading a discussion regarding criticisms of Pitchfork a while ago, which made the claim that critics tend to like the imperfect and incomplete, often raising them above that of the competent and good. And while that is a problem with Pitchfork (among another things), it's not just a problem with that site. Hell, I'd argue that as a critic, I fall into the exact same trap far too often - most of the time because the flawed and incomplete often present a more complete picture of what the artist is like, providing more nuance between the lines. Critics find that more interesting and ultimately more compelling that the works of artists that are good, but nothing all that incredible or special.

But I'm not one to shy away from a challenge, so with that, let's talk about The Band Perry.

album review: 'same trailer, different park' by kacey musgraves

Let's return, again, to country music.

Over the course of the past year since I reviewed the Zac Brown Band's magnificent Uncaged, I've had a bit of a chance to get reacquainted with country music - and by reacquainted, I mean catch a glimpse at the singles that show up on the pop charts and the occasional YouTube video that pops up. And while I could say that I did indeed see more country music when I reviewed Taylor Swift's Red, I'd be lying, mostly because that album would be lying if it called itself country.

And yet Taylor Swift is considered one of the leading country acts in this day and age, a fact that doesn't so much baffle me as disappoint me. This is mostly because I'd be stretching to call Taylor Swift much of a leader in this field on any level - her lyrics are only getting more mundane and insufferable, her vocals are absolutely nothing to write home about, and when her instrumentation contains dubstep and electropop breakdowns, you can barely consider it country music anymore! 

Well, one thing's for damn sure, you really can't find many male country singers who can match Taylor Swift's star power. Tell me this: if you're not a dedicated country listener, do you think you would have a chance in hell telling Chris Young, Justin Moore, Jake Owen, Brantley Gilbert, Dierks Bentley, Brad Paisley, Jason Aldean, Eric Church, or Luke Bryan apart? Sure, I can tell them apart, but your average listener isn't going to be able to pick out each voice in 'The Only Way I Know', which features the trio of Jason Aldean, Eric Church, and Luke Bryan. And then when you factor in acts like Rascal Flatts (who have and always will bore the living shit out of me) and the influx of male country acts from the 90s who are still making hits (Tim McGraw, Clay Walker, Trace Adkins, Blake Shelton, the list goes on), the country charts are buried in an influx of acts with no one taking a definite lead in the genre. For tNhe most part, too many of these guys sound the same, with the same country rock style and the same bland lyrics that seem to be about booze, girls, cars, and loving America. You hardly ever get acts that stand out much against the herd here - I mean, say what you want about Toby Keith, but at least the man has a distinctive sound and style to his songwriting and charismatic delivery that makes him stick out. Brad Paisley has his excellent guitar playing, Florida Georgia Line has that annoying backwoods twang in the vocals ('Cruise' is still kind of awesome, though), Kenny Chesney is there to rip off Jimmy Buffett with alarming and shitty frequency, but outside of the Zac Brown Band, who the hell of this group has the serious songwriting chops to stand out and be remotely memorable? Say what you will about Garth Brooks, but at least the man had great songwriters (and he was a halfway decent songwriter himself) and he had the charisma to deliver the songs well - and that's why songs like 'Friends In Low Places' will never go away. 

The point that I'm trying to make here is that it doesn't tend to be vocal delivery or instrumentation that makes country songs stand out - almost unique amongst any genre of music, the songwriting and lyrics come into much higher prominence for singling out the greats. That's why Ronnie Dunn's 'Cost of Livin' is one of the best songs of 2011 - it wasn't because of the instrumentation, but because Dunn was singing a desperate song with a very desperate, uncompromising edge. It's one of the most raw and excellent country songs I've ever heard, and for the most part, it's because of the songwriting and subject matter.

In another case, let's compare three mixed-gender country acts: Lady Antebellum, Little Big Town, and The Band Perry. Now let's make this clear: I both like and dislike songs from all of these bands. I think none of them are all that special or spectacular. But for me, I'm going to devote more time to talking and analyzing and ultimately thinking about The Band Perry over the other two, mostly because The Band Perry write very flawed but very interesting songs. Yes, 'If I Die Young' is shit, but I find it a lot more interesting and entertaining to talk about and thus it's more memorable compared to the middle-brow pablum that Little Big Town and Lady Antebellum keep shoveling out. Even the bad stuff that Lady Antebellum has released (like the execrable 'Just A Kiss') isn't as interesting as a song like 'Better Dig Two', mostly because The Band Perry is taking something of a risk. They're essentially the goth kids in the country scene with their obsession with death, and considering how much southern gothic imagery they co-opt, I find them more than a little amusing and kind of intriguing

And with the discussion of death filtered through a southern gothic aesthetic, we come to the female country singers - most of which have either co-opted Carrie Underwood's Beyonce-esque contempt for men with mixed results or fallen in line with the industry's traditional gender roles (Taylor Swift). To be honest, I've gotten more than a little sick of Carrie Underwood's schtick (as I said in my review of Orianthi's Heaven In This Hell that nobody cared about), but I prefer her fire-spitting to Taylor Swift's adolescence - at least it's some sign of maturity. 

But one of the more interesting country acts to come out in the wake of Carrie Underwood is former Pistol Annies' singer Miranda Lambert. Now, to be honest, I've always tended to drop her onto the B-list, mostly because for the past two years she's been making bland, not all that interesting country lacks a certain degree of depth or thought. But then she released an interesting little song called 'Mama's Broken Heart', which is a song where Lambert gets cheated on / dumped, and she has to balance her own grief-stricken rage with putting a polite friendly smile on to the public. It's a tough dichotomy to play, and Miranda Lambert plays it masterfully. 

But what I find interesting about it is the juxtaposition of societal expectations - because believe it or not, societal expectations play a huge role in country music. Keep in mind this is music often marketed solely to rural America, which has a very distinctive set of values and customs that don't really reflect those in the coastal cities - or in Canada. And while most of these societal expectations tend to be racist, sexist, homophobic, prejudiced, or just plain moronic, they're still expectations that genuinely good people in those rural areas live by. Sure, they're often expectations that reflect an America that wants to be in 1950 or 1980 (which wanted to pretend to be 1950), but people still live by them, and they are a marketing demographic. 

And here's what makes 'Mama's Broken Heart' so interesting - because it pushes the cruel double standard forced on women under those societal expectation into view. The fact that they're expected to be prim and proper 'Stepford' ladies, even in the face of their partners acting like pigs or leaving them. Now let's be fair here, the push behind Carrie Underwood would seem to suggest a more liberated mindset, but I don't quite buy it. To me, too much of Carrie Underwood's material comes across as too harsh and grating to be anything but a fantasy or a pose - you know, like how Beyonce only sounds convincing when she's angry like a man, but she's happily married to Jay-Z. Miranda Lambert, on the other hand, brings across that grief and rage and vulnerability in a way that Kelly Clarkson used to do and Adele perfected, and while most of 'Mama's Broken Heart' might seem like it's being played as a laugh, there's genuine sadness and anger in that song that makes it work better than you'd think, mostly because Lambert isn't the rail-thin knockout that Underwood is, or the fact that she's not quite as polished. I'm reminded a lot of Reba McEntire with Miranda Lambert on this track, and while she isn't quite as good as Reba, this is a good step in the right direction.

So on that topic, one should ask who wrote such a border-line transgressive (or at least out-of-the-ordinary) track for Lambert. Well, one of those songwriters is a young woman named Kacey Musgraves, who just released her major label debut album Same Trailer Different Park. 

An album that might just be one of the best goddamn albums of the year. Holy shit, did I not see this coming.

the top ten worst hit songs of 2012

About a year ago, I wrote my list of the Top 10 Worst Singles of 2011. My criteria was simple: the songs had to debut on Billboard's Year-End Hot 100 list that year. Now, I easily could have gone digging for far worse songs, but I wanted to make the point that these songs weren't just bad, but they were also disgustingly popular, far more popular that all of those independent smaller acts that you might like.

And to be honest, while I can never understand why these awful songs get popular (well, I can, and that gives me plenty of ammunition to keep doing this for years to come), the more I think about it, the more I think the big problem with the pop charts isn't that they tend to be bad, but that they tend to be bland. Now granted, there are some years that are far better than others (2011 was a lot better than 2010, and 2012 was better than both of them), but there's a whole load of mediocre music that isn't good enough to like, but isn't bad enough to be worth hating. There isn't a lot of excellence or awfulness, just a lot of 'meh', at least in the majority of years.

But yeah, there was a significant amount of awful, and just for perspective, here's my original list of the Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 2011:

10. 'What The Hell' by Avril Lavigne
9. 'Dirt Road Anthem' by Jason Aldean ft. Ludacris
8. 'Backseat' by New Boyz ft. The Cataracs & Dev
7. 'The Time (Dirty Bit)' by The Black Eyed Peas
6. 'She Ain't You' by Chris Brown
5. 'Lighters' by Bad Meets Evil ft. Bruno Mars
4. 'The Lazy Song' by Bruno Mars
3. 'Pumped Up Kicks' by Foster The People
2. 'Sexy And I Know It' by LMFAO
1. 'Don't Wanna Go Home' by Jason Derulo

Now upon reflection today and after relistening to all of these songs, I'd make a few minor changes to this list, make it look like this:

10. 'What The Hell' by Avril Lavigne 'Tonight, Tonight' by Hot Chelle Rae
9. 'Dirt Road Anthem' by Jason Aldean ft. Ludacris
8. 'Backseat' by New Boyz ft. The Cataracs & Dev 'Country Girl (Shake It For Me)' by Luke Bryan
7. 'The Time (Dirty Bit)' by The Black Eyed Peas 'She Ain't You' by Chris Brown
6. 'She Ain't You' by Chris Brown 'Lighters' by Bad Meets Evil ft. Bruno Mars
5. 'Lighters' by Bad Meets Evil ft. Bruno Mars 'Backseat' by New Boyz ft. The Cataracs & Dev
4. 'The Lazy Song' by Bruno Mars
3. 'Pumped Up Kicks' by Foster The People 'The Time (Dirty Bit)' by The Black Eyed Peas
2. 'Sexy And I Know It' by LMFAO
1. 'Don't Wanna Go Home' by Jason Derulo

Yeah, there's a bit of reshuffling of things around here, and a few swaps. The big surprise for me was taking 'Pumped Up Kicks' off the list, considering how much I hated Foster The People's début album and all of its pretensions to indie rock that it didn't earn or have in the slightest. And that's to say nothing of the issues I still have today with the rancid lyrical content of the song and the atrocious tonal choices. However, a year later, after observing the explosion of indie rock across the modern pop charts, I can't help but admit that Foster The People's success might have been the cue required to get other, better indie acts the air time they needed for groundswell. And with that in mind, I really can't hate 'Pumped Up Kicks' the same way.

Oh, make no mistake, it still is a bad song, but it's by no means the worst thing I've ever heard, and while the subject matter still gets under my skin, the song is so weightless and ephemeral (like the majority of faux-hipster trash pretending to have depth) that it really leaves no impression a year later. And while I was angered at the corporatization of indie rock, after a year of seeing great indie acts succeed with a vestige of artistic integrity intact, I realized that sometimes the machine can work (and besides, there are far more insulting corporate sell-outs this year).

In fact, when perusing the Year-End Top 100 list Billboard stamps out every year, I was surprised how many previously established 'good' acts delivered career worst performances this year. 2011 was a bit of a weird transitional year for the pop charts (coming out of the club explosion of 2009-2010), and 2012 was even stranger, with the eruption of indie rock, the return of lightweight immature pop music, and whatever the fuck hip-hop/R&B mutated into this year. I mean, this was the year 'Gangnam Style', a k-pop parody track satirizing the Gangnam lifestyle in South Korea, a track entirely in Korean, became one of the biggest tracks of the year (for the record, I actually think 'Gangnam Style' is pretty good, but not great, as PSY has a lot of energy and personality, which elevates the song above LMFAO's 'Party Rock Anthem').

But that said, there was still plenty of garbage that charted this year, and a whole lot of material I'd only describe as mediocre. Before I get to my actual list, let me run down a few Dishonourable Mentions that need to be brought up here:

album review: 'red' by taylor swift

Dear Taylor Swift,

You know, I thought about writing this review in other ways, but I quickly realized that I’d lose some of the essence of what I’m trying to say if I don’t make this as approachable as possible. Plus, I want to prevent this from devolving into a rant, so a letter is probably the only way this sort of thing can work.

So let’s deal with introductions. I’m Silens Cursor, a semi-professional music critic and – pay attention, this is important – a former fan of yours. Yes, I liked your music. Your first two albums are pretty damn good pop-country, and you earned a lot of kudos from me by actually having a significant hand in writing your own material. It lent a certain ‘realness’ to your lyrics and simple style that was surprisingly appealing. Granted, I’m fairly certain lurking inside me is the spirit of a teenage girl who listens to Avril Lavigne and Panic! At The Disco and Fall Out Boy and the Backstreet Boys and, well, you and who appreciates all these acts completely without irony. I get that some of your appeal was the ‘cuteness’ of it all, for lack of a better term (I’ll come back to this), but I genuinely think you have some well-written material that has some widespread appeal outside of the target demographic.

And then something happened. I’m not sure where, but I’m fairly certain it started with Speak Now, the first album of yours of which I wasn’t really much of a fan. Don’t get me wrong, I liked ‘Back To December’ a lot, but it was here I was beginning to observe a dichotomy I think it’s important to discuss, because it’s an interesting phenomenon I saw both in your music and that of Avril Lavigne, an artist you really have a lot in common with. I guess that also makes this letter something of a warning, because I don’t want to see you go the way she did, and a lot of the major symptoms are starting to crop up.

You see, Avril Lavigne came from the world of pop-punk with Let Go and Under My Skin, two albums I still hold are pretty damn excellent for an early 2000s female act. She had a certain bratty authenticity in her delivery that didn’t drain her of the very real fragility she could display on her ballads. There’s a reason why ‘I’m With You’ is the best song Avril Lavigne ever wrote – it played to all of her strengths, and really turned her into a captivating performer. You know, sort of like with you and ‘Teardrops On My Guitar’ (for the record, ‘I’m With You’ is better – sorry).

But here’s the dichotomy – you both were treading a very fine line between mainstream pop success and artistic authenticity. I’ll grant that Avril had it easier – she was working with a pop climate that was marginally more mature and ‘real’ in 2002 than yours was in 2008. But make no mistake, your careers have charted similar paths, and it’s an unnerving thing to know that it’s only a matter of time before you hit the tipping point.

You see, it’s a terrible thing, but there tends to be a shelf life for artists who work to preserve ‘authenticity’. That’s why you hear about acts ‘selling out’ – the point where artistic integrity is cast aside in order to produce trend-riding material that might sell well, but lacks a certain individual flavor. And given the alarming trend of acts selling out in the past few years – Maroon 5, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne, I could go on – I knew it was just a matter of time before everyone’s favourite country princess might be coerced over to that dynamic. It wasn’t a matter of ‘if’, it was ‘when’. Sorry about the cynicism, but in this day and age, particularly when it comes to pop music, it only makes sense.

Now, I’ll admit that branding an act a ‘sell-out’ is a very serious charge, and not one I would level without very good reason. And it’s also particularly hard with acts that rely on certain definitive qualities that are central to their artistic integrity. You know, how with Pink it was her vindictive, painfully raw feminism, and with Avril Lavigne it was her bratty, shockingly sincere adolescence, and with Maroon 5… well, they always wrote the soundtracks of douchebags, but there was a distinctive loss of personality in their material.

But outside of isolated incidents (the autotune and Wiz Khalifa’s presence on ‘Payphone’), it can be a bit tricky to find the precise elements to truthfully brand an act a sell-out. To me, there are two main elements I can pinpoint: a shift in instrumentation, or a shift in subject matter. And while some elements remain consistent between Red and Speak Now, there are a few things that I can spot that make this album much less tolerable.